Network Watcher Connection Monitor is a pretty cool service in Azure, ever need to monitor a Virtual machine but third-party extensions cannot be configured?
Connection Monitor allows you to monitor Virtual Machines ports to ensure they’re still listening and reachable.
How does it work?
The connection is created from a Source Virtual Machine to your destination Virtual Machine, can be on same network or not, providing the destination IP has a valid route
How to configure a Connection Monitor connection
Have two available Virtual Machines available that can route to each other.
In this, I will be monitoring the RDP Connection (TCP/3389) between source and destination Virtual Machines
Note:- Network Security Group rule and any other additional firewall rules to be added for source -> destination:Port before a successful connection monitor connection is successful
Select Source Virtual Machine and Connection Monitor
This is the Connection monitor dashboard, any connections you create here are viewable.
Add a Connection to be monitored as below:-
Name: RDP
Subscription: Select Subscription
Source Virtual Machine: Virtual Machine for source of the connection
Destination: Can be an IP or Virtual Machine
Port: Destination Port to be monitored
Advanced Settings: None selected in this example but can increase probing interval rather than the default 60 seconds and include source port if required
rdp connection now able to be viewed in Connection Monitor
Selecting connection you can see it is currently reachable and accessible
Topology view is a nice feature as well, can assist in diagnosis if the connection monitor fails
Creating alerts
Alerts can be created for % probes failed & Avg. Round-Trip time in Azure Monitor and new preview alerts Checks Failed Percent & Round Trip Time
Thomas Thornton 